Exposing some important things of Kiwi.com and maybe both good and bad.
From the time flight bookings became online via the Internet, there arose a lot of competition. There we many companies who wanted to excel in this field of industry. Many startups arose at that time, and all wanted to make flight booking easier just via few clicks on the screen. Today in this article, we will review a similar website called Kiwi.com and rank whether worth using it or not. Hop along.
Contents
About Kiwi.com
Kiwi is a Czech online travel agency founded in 2012 by Oliver Dlouhy` and Jozef Kepesi. It was previously known as skypicker.com. It provides ground transportation, a fare aggregator, a metasearch engine, and booking for online tickets. Its ticket search features Kiwi.com’s “virtual interlining” concept – itineraries combined from over 750 carriers, including many who don’t usually cooperate in online bookings. Kiwi also guarantees its customers via a service known as Kiwi.com’s Guarantee, which claims to protect its customers from missed connections caused by delay, schedule changes in flights, or cancellation of flights.
You can access the official website here – https://www.kiwi.com/en/.
Quick History
Formerly known as skypicker.com, this online portal was created in 2011. The company was founded in Brno. The domain of Kiwi.com was acquired back in 2016 for $800,000 and was rebranded. Two guys in a basement earlier started it with a big idea. Four years later, in 2016, during the rebranding, there were a total of 560 employees trying to make that big idea a reality.
Oliver Dlouhy, child executive of the Czech Republic-based startup, said that the website redesign and rebrand reflect the company’s growth and that it’s moving forward with time. During the rebranding, he said, “We wanted something unique and completely unconfusable so a word that was the same in all languages – spelled and pronounced the same in all languages” He also said that the company wanted to offer more advanced and new services to the audience.
Jiri Hlavenka was the foremost investor in kiwi.com. It also gained and acquired a stake in Jaroslav Kokolus in 2017. In 2019, Kiwi’s main shareholder was General Atlantic. However, Oliver and Kepesi continue to remain the major ones, and other shareholders are Touzimsky Airlines and Lubos Charcenko.
Services and Features
Coming to the most important part of the article, which will help us take action. – Features and Services
1. Virtual Global Carrier
Kiwi is on the move to build the world’s first Virtual Global Supercarrier. It aims to combine air and ground transport, ride-hailing, and micro-mobility. This will allow the customers to reach from one point A to another point B with ease and no anxiousness about anything.
2. Kiwi’s Guarantee
This booking service is actually very beneficial for the customers, but later in the present time, it proved to be something else that we will be discussing shortly.
This service claims to protect the consumer from schedule changes in transport, cancellations, or missed connections caused by delays. You can get your compensation directly via the portal, and thus, you don’t have to do any physical work for it.
3. Inspirational
In 2018, it launched NOMAD. NOMAD is a special multi-city travel search tool that helped the audience and users book with ease and launched Tequils, a B2B platform. It helps you find cities with ease and match your travel exactly to your budget. If your budget is too low, then it also suggests you for other similar cities and places to travel in your budget.
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4. Other Important services
- It offers 24/7 support assistance that too in more than 12 laguages with an excellent rating on Trustpilot.
- Its allows you access your boarding passes offline without any internet.
- It has almost more than 100 million + daily queries on its platform.
- Average seats sold per day on Kiwi is almost 40000 and above.
- In 2019, travellers from Kiwi.com have travelled more than 14 billion+ kilometers.
- It has its headquaters in almost every major conturies, in major cities in those countires.
- The company is one of the biggest online air ticket sellers in Europe.
5. Controversies
Coming to the most deadly drawback, during the Covid Pandemic, Kiwi has faced criticism. It was targeted for the refund policies and its practices on its customer services.
According to a corporation interpreter, Kiwi.com doesn’t account for COVID-19 restrictions once making travel itineraries. This has a junction rectifier to customers being charged thousands of dollars for flights that people couldn’t lawfully absorb light-weight of COVID-19 travel restrictions. The corporate has place up barriers to refunds for people WHO are issued lawfully not possible travel arrangements when booking with the location. One couple had been issued not possible travel arrangements was solely provided a refund once Kiwi.com was contacted by a replacement Zealand-based news website concerning their refund practices.
Moreover, it only offered 10 Euros to travelers who canceled their booking before it also faced criticism. Kiwi blamed the airlines for not issuing the refunds quickly. Also, The Observer marked Kiwi having one of the worst customer services after it started to charge a fee for standard operating services assistance.
Actual Review and Opinion
Coming to the crucial part of the article; Even though Kiwi has proved to be one of the best sites for travel bookings in history, this changed amid the pandemic since the mid-2020. The amount of criticism faced has shown some evil nature of itself and the audience. Even in 2021, Kiwi sued Southwest Airlines, alleging that it’s scraping of fare information from their website was a breach of contract. Even though it removed the Southwest logo from their search results, it continued to see their tickets.
This misbehavior has shown its true colors and also removed a lot of audiences from its website. People do not trust kiwi nowadays more as of its brutal behaviors in recent times.
So as per an opinion, it is suggested to go more with alternatives rather than this. People hope that kiwi will return to its standards once the pandemic is over and the situation is more adaptable. Till then it is preferred to make your travel booking with its alternatives.
Due to travel restrictions, who knows you too may lose your hard-earned money if not played safe.
Alternatives to Kiwi
- Cleartrip.com
- MakeMyTrip
- InterMiles
- SkyScanner
FAQs
Are these alternatives trusted and safe?
Yes, these alternatives are 100 % safe and trustworthy.
Is Kiwi still taking bookings?
Yes, it is still taking bookings on its website. You can check its terms and policies here: https://www.kiwi.com/en/pages/content/legal.
Why did Kiwi blame the Airlines for the refund?
The airlines said that Kiwi refused to provide any credit card details and information about the customer and their payment and blamed the airlines for no reason. It’s better to stick to alternatives in such time.
Conclusion
For the sake of your security is better not to travel with Kiwi at the current time. Though having a good history, it has turned out not to be in the top lists in the world. But we are sure that it will regain its standards and reach its actual heights as soon as the pandemic shuts.
There are provided alternatives out of which Skyscanner will allow you to compare your travel budget from all the available carriers and is one of my personal favorites. Do let us know your thoughts. Till then, Ciao.
